For the last several months, I have been asking you to bring Dustin Salter, former RUF campus minister at Furman, and his family before the Throne of Grace. Yesterday afternoon, Dustin died after a four month struggle with a very traumatic brain injury he suffered while riding a bike only streets away from his home.

I never met Dustin or his family, but strangely, I have felt much sadness for them and have prayed fervently for his healing all these months. I hurt for his family, for RUF at Furman and at TCU, and for Redeemer Pres here in Greenville. As a friend of mine wrote shortly after Dustin's accident, "I don’t really know Dustin at all. He and his family just uprooted from Texas to come here. Yet, this week I’ve found myself wrapped in a blanket of sorrow. It’s refreshing in a way because it makes you feel real, like the velveteen rabbit, when you experience grief or sorrow not your own."

Dustin's accident and resulting death seem unexplainable. He was riding bikes with his children ... he was strong and healthy ... Yet, as his wife wrote, Dustin had "hit a bump in the road that brought dark providence" into their lives, forever changing him and their family.

I truly, in my heart of hearts, believed that God would heal Dustin. It seemed like the right thing, the only thing, for this man to return to his ministry and to preach again. Yesterday afternoon, I felt very much like the man who came to Jesus and begged for the healing of his son, yet Jesus's response to him was to "go home." (John 4:46-54) (What thoughts must have been running through his mind?) Yet, the same verse says,"The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way."

I don't think it was a coincidence that in Dustin's last sermon, only three days before his accident, he preached on the providence of God. In this sermon, Dustin said, "If we knew the horrors of the future we’d be paralyzed, unable to live today ... The guarantee is never an easy life. The guarantee is a changed life, which in the end is the best kind of life. One that changes us, more and more, into the image of Christ."

Although Dustin's ministry profoundly influenced hundreds, and although he was a phenomenal preacher, a great leader, and a loving husband and father, certainly his accident and death will reap a much greater harvest than Dustin had ever dreamed. Surely he did not know the impact, and comfort, his own words from that Sunday morning in November would bring to his wife, his children, and so many others. The providence that he preached of, that he believed in, and that he trusted with all his heart, was the "dark providence" of which his wife spoke in her letter. It was the same providence that secured Dustin's soul before the creation of the world and the same providence that held him fast and secure in the hour of death.

May we "believe the words that Jesus [has spoken]" to us as we pray for Dustin's family and as we live in the blessed reality of a Sovereign God who holds our every breath in His loving embrace.